Saturday, 16 February 2013

Vinyl LPs have always had their champions. Ever since the point in the
80s when CDs became the dominant medium for listening to music, there have been
people who swore the swore the sound was always better on a 33 RPM LP, and
vinyl albums have often been priced at a premium to those little silver plastic
discs.

This seems to have stepped up a gear since digital downloads knocked
CDs off their perch, and there have been plenty of magazine articles, radio and
TV documentaries exploring the enduring appeal of vinyl. A couple of weeks ago
BBC4 gave Danny Baker three hour long shows to talk with various mates about
what made the old LPs so great.

So far it’s been a minority interest, but this week I saw a sign that
it’s a love affair that has obtained some weight in the mainstream media. On a
platform at Baker Street Underground there was a large poster for the online
dating service match.com, conveying a sense of expectancy with the words “I listened
to her favourite album before the date so I could understand why she loved it
so much”.

Alongside the words was an image of a vinyl LP, the stylus on the
grooves of the first track. It was a surprising choice, as for the vast
majority of people that moment would mean slipping a CD into a slot or pressing
a button on an MP3 player, but it was obviously meant to convey that there was
something special about the man, the woman and the prospects for their
relationship. The message was that it would produce something better than most
first dates, or whatever any other dating service could offer, because playing
an LP produces something CDs or downloads can’t match.

You could argue over whether it’s a message that stands up to scrutiny,
but when the advertising industry stars to use an idea it believes it is
sufficiently widespread to seduce a large number of people. It’s betting that
there’s a demographic with money to spend and a readiness to accept the association
of ideas: in this case that a guy who listens to vinyl is worth a serious
relationship.

It might amount to a load of old tosh, but it shows that listening to
music on vinyl – or at least the idea of it – has become seductive to more than
a few music geeks.

Sunday, 10 February 2013

I can’t be the only person who wasn’t completely surprised by the news
that, according to IT security firm AVG, kids as young as 11 are
beginning to write malicious hack code to wreak some havoc and steal some
data in the cyber world. We’ve heard plenty about hackers in their mid to late
teens, but this fits neatly with the image of delinquent behaviour by junior
geeks who are happier staring at a screen than going out in the real world, and
is something you could believe of those who would like to but don’t have the
nerve to spray graffiti or smash up a bus shelter.

But while the story sounds credible, the evidence seems limited. AVG
came up with one solid example, and a lot of talk about patterns that suggest
there may be a growing number of kids barely of secondary school age who are up
to no good in the cyber world. It’s not clear if it’s a genuine trend or
speculation based on a handful of cases.

It’s worth remembering that a story like this can do some good for the
company that raises the alarm. It says it is paying attention to serious issues
and concerned about the wide world in which it works. That’s why they carry out
research and publish studies aimed at asserting their credentials as thought
leaders; and when it makes the national news it’s a result for the PR team.

But it has to be remembered that this is all part of the marketing
effort, and that the overall aim of such efforts is to boost a company’s sales.
It would need a lot of time studying the data, and probably a lot of expertise,
for anyone to know if the assertions are correct, and I don’t know whether the
evidence behind AVG’s warnings is as strong as it claims. But when something
like this comes from the private sector you know there’s a commercial element
to it.

It might be a real phenomenon, in which case it’s a genuine worry, but
it might be just a storm in a cyber tea cup.